Beat using a walkthrough and maps since there was no chance of me figuring out what to do with the dialogue in Japanese. This game reminded me of Air Fortress because it was a mix of shoot em up with on foot top down dungeons, similar to Zelda and Blaster Master. The whole point of the game was to farm score in the shoot em up, which was hp on foot and spent to buy supplies and warp between time periods. Going back in time and shooting a specific thing changed the future by creating a dungeon, which then had to be navigated to find a special time crystal. Find all crystals and beat the boss to unlock the final mission, which had a lame boss for the bad ending, and even lamer timed maze dungeon for the good ending. Both endings were just a wall of text that I could not read. Lame.

This was an interesting concept for a game but there were a number of issues that kept it from being much fun. The shoot em up stages were fairly good but the difficulty ramped up severely such that even on slow motion mode I often died. It was bullet hell with some enemies firing many spread out shots, shots coming from off screen, lots of enemies at once, some that were way faster than the player ship, ones that tried to ram, and even cloaked ships that suddenly appeared. This was made even more dangerous by the need to get kills for score. The basic shot could be fired only 3 at a time, so there was a bit of tactical choice between using the normal and turbo buttons. The only weapon upgrade was a laser that penetrated enemies. There was a speed up and barrier to absorb hits. I never bought any barriers since I was save state scumming, but those and extra lives would definitely be needed when playing legit. After the difficulty the biggest issue I had was finding a certain trigger in the 4th stage. The walkthrough talked about a massive ocean but there was only a 1 screen section with water. Not what I would call massive. I ended up looking up a different walkthrough with pictures. From there I proceeded to beat the game, making sure to farm plenty of score to the point where I finished it with 60k. The on foot dungeons had no in game map so they were more annoying than fun. The guy again shot in a 3 pattern with only those 3 projectiles allowed on screen at once, which was bad if the shots missed and I had to wait for them to travel across the entire screen. Enemies were simple, other than the damn bugs and bouncy balls that could move way faster than the player. There were a few bigger enemies that were almost like bosses, but they all used very simple patterns. 1 type could only be destroyed using the expensive solar lamp, and there were a couple passageways that slowly drained score as a toll to get past.

Overall the shooting was decent and the dungeons could have been a lot better. I'd rather see more adventure aspects, like permanent upgrades and powers rather than having to buy everything, and more dynamic bosses and puzzles.

6.5/10